I’ve been editing my intuition film now for three weeks, going through the interviews and pulling the best bits.

It’s an intense process.

I’ve shot more than 50 interviews and after 3 weeks, we’ve only cut 20 interviews – that’s how painstaking the process is.

It’s a wonderful opportunity though for me to take in the wisdom of what these people are saying – to truly absorb it – because I have to go over the interviews many times in the process of selection.

I’m making the film intuitively, and so I haven’t gone into the editing room with a fixed idea of how to approach the film stylistically. I’ve wanted the material to speak to me.

For nearly three weeks it didn’t speak to me.
And I was starting to panic.
In fact I was really starting to freak out.

Then on Thursday night it finally did speak to me. Something one of the interviewees said clicked with me, and I made a creative breakthrough that has truly excited me. I can’t tell you what that is – only that I’m hoping that this will be unlike any film you’ve ever seen.

If I wanted to make a regular documentary, I would have cut all the interviews by now, and I’d be heading towards a locked off cut in two to three weeks. That’s the usual schedule for a documentary.

Not this one. Not the way I’m making it. As it is, I can’t see myself being out of the editing room before maybe August, at the earliest.

But – when I am finally finished, I think the film will be amazing. And it will be something that a lot of people will want to see.

I have more to shoot, and some interesting things to do in post production – and I need more money. I really need more money. Availability of funds will also dictate my timing.

That aside –

I wanted to tell you about a parable told to me by one of the interviewees – the wonderful lady who runs the Bombay Yoga Institute, which is said to be the oldest yoga centre in the world. Her name is Smt. Hansaji Jayadeva Yogendra, and she’s one of the leaders of the Hindu community in India – and a very wise lady.

This is the story she told me:

A man was climbing a mountain. It was snowing, and getting late. He was nearly at the top of the mountain, but night was falling, He wanted to get to the top before it got dark. 

As he got to the top, he slipped and fell. 

He fell and he fell – and as he was falling down the side of the mountain he was quite convinced that he would die. There was no way he could not die. But then he was jerked up – and he remembered – he was wearing a safety rope!

He finally came to rest dangling on the end of the safety rope, swaying in the wind.

It was night now, completely dark, and it was freezing. He knew that he would not survive the night in the cold. He would freeze to death. 

And so in his mind he asked for help – and a “voice” came to him. He believed this to be the Voice of God. The voice said to him: If you want to live, then cut the rope.

The climber said: No, I can’t cut the rope. I’ll die. Please give me another way so I can live. 

Cut the rope, the voice said again. 

Again the climber said he couldn’t. He pleaded with God to give him another way, but he was not answered. 

In the morning, rescuers came, and they found his body.

He had frozen to death.

As they cut him free of the rope, one of the rescuers said to another: What a shame he didn’t realise – he was only ten feet off a ledge. If he’d cut himself free of the rope and fallen onto that soft snow on the ledge, he then could have made his way down off the mountain, and he would have lived. 

Hansaji told me, her eyes sparkling as she finished this story, that so many times we believe we know better than our intuitive wisdom.

But we actually don’t.

We can’t see what our guidance sees…